July 27, 2020

Message from Re-Cities: We are strong supporters of using tech, data, and digital twins to help accelerate smarter and greener communities and cities around the world. To do so, we would want to aggregate and analyze data to learn trends, but in a way that protects privacy!!

Last year NIST launched a Privacy Engineering Collaboration Space to aggregate open source tools, solutions, and processes that support privacy engineering and risk management. Let's learn together!!

Linked article written by Joseph Near, David Darais, and Kaitlin Boeckl

By Phil Goldstein
 

Cities need to evolve their approaches to technology as they continue to face challenges such as congestion, pollution and crime, as well as new threats such as cyberattacks, climate change, and other emerging issues. 
 

“This new reality requires new approaches, leveraging a range of new technologies to create true strategy shifts,” said Dominique Bonte, vice president for end markets at ABI Research, in a statement.
 

One of the strategic shifts ABI identified in a recently released white paper, “5 Ways Smart Cities Are Getting Smarter,” that can help cities push ahead on smart city initiatives is the use of digital twin technology. Digital twins combine numerous technologies to create full-scale digital versions of real-world objects and processes, changing how cities are designed, monitored and managed.

June 01, 2020

By Daphne Tomlinson, Senior Research Associate at Memoori

Digital Twins, virtual models of a process, product or service that allow for data analysis and system monitoring via simulations, are playing an increasing role in IoT and digital transformation in buildings. Projects today span multiple building sectors, including commercial real estate, retail, infrastructure, smart cities, smart campuses and healthcare facilities.

Deloitte predicted in 2019 that the digital twin is the next industry-wide disruption in real estate. The nascent market for digital twin platforms in smart commercial buildings has attracted early innovators offering a diverse range of use cases, who are challenging the established vendors of IT and building management systems with disruptive solutions. Incumbent BIoT players with digital twin solutions include Siemens, Johnson Controls, Schneider Electric, Honeywell, IBM and Microsoft.

MMC (MMC Gamuda Joint Venture) based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, used unmanned aerial vehicles to quickly capture hundreds of high-quality images and infinite amounts of data along the project corridor, processing images with ContextCapture to deliver accurate 3D reality meshes of the sites. Using ProjectWise to establish an open, connected data environment provided the interoperability to make the reality models available across cloud-based BIM and GIS data platforms, enhancing understanding of existing site conditions. MMC generated digital twins of its construction sites and developed integrated workflows that helped expand the applications of reality modeling.

March 12, 2020

By Microsoft Asia News Center

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In collaboration with Bentley Systems and Schneider Electric, Microsoft has rolled out a digital twin of its new regional headquarters at Frasers Tower in Singapore, offering a living blueprint for the future of smart buildings.

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“The workplace of the future is about embracing innovation into the very fabric of our space, so that we create multiple touchpoints of connectivity, are intentionally inclusive and accessible, while being very mindful of sustainability and the environment. At Frasers Tower in Singapore, we worked closely with Bentley Systems and Schneider Electric to implement sensors and telemetry to create a connected workplace, that allows us to adjust the space based on usage, therefore improving energy efficiency,” said Ricky Kapur, VP for Sales, Marketing and Operations for Microsoft in Asia Pacific.

March 10, 2020

Big decision on Sidewalk Labs coming up in May, 2020. We support Sidewalks Labs' ideas... but with a little more transparency and citizen inclusion on data privacy. We hope Sidewalk gets approved!!

February 24, 2020

By William Maher

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The New South Wales Government launched the NSW Spatial Digital Twin, a digital representation of 8,500 square kilometres in Western Sydney.

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Anyone can use a web browser to view the virtual environment, though authorized users can log-in for access to additional data sets. 

The virtual environment is one of largest of its type, according to the NSW Government. It includes more than half a million buildings, 20,000 km of roads, 22 million trees and 7,000 strata plans.

The Digital Innovation Appendix (DIA) provides updates to the Master Innovation and Development Plan (MIDP) which reflects the Threshold Issues resolution process. The DIA also provides further detailed information on the digital innovation proposals included in the MIDP, and provides an overview of Sidewalk Labs' approaches to responsible data use and inclusive design...

December 09, 2019

​Public trust in Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple (GAFA) has never been lower and evidence suggests a wave of regulation will soon be unleashed against tech companies.

Data privacy is not disappearing as a dominant urban concern in the global environment, not for Silicon Valley, not for would-be smart cities around the world and certainly not for government regulators.

GlobalData’s recent Data Privacy report – by its Thematic Research team – warns that Big Tech’s golden age of light-touch regulation, strong political alliances and near immunity from prosecution is coming to an end.

PWC's point of view on a 3-tier development model for the digital transformation of citizen services.

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The development of smart cities around the world is gathering pace, with the total value of the global smart city market projected to exceed US $1 trillion by 2020 and US $2.5 trillion by 2025. As this growth continues, one of the most important and dynamic aspects of smart cities is the evolution of the roles and relationships between the key participants involved in envisioning and creating them.

November 27, 2019

By beca.com
 

A digital twin is a high-fidelity representation of the real-world that looks like, behaves like and is connected to the real world, to improve understanding for decision making. 
– Stephen Witherden, 2017.

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The benefits of being able to plan, design and operate a ‘living, breathing’ replica of your asset are multiple!  Here are just a few:

• Reduced capital spend and maintenance costs

• Higher OEE / more output

• Lower disturbance risk / better asset resilience 

• Lower operating overhead 

• Improved return on investment 

• Better risk management 

• Better customer service 

• Improved health and safety training and systems 

By Shoji Nozaki, Technical Director, 3DS Business Transformation Japan, Dassault Systemes K.K.

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Agenda includes:

Dassault Systemes Overview
Smart City (Virtual Singapore)
Smart Mobility (AKKA Technology + Rennes City)

What is a Smart City? according to CNBC many governments around the globe are racing to infuse technology with just about every aspect of its city's operations. Mentions of Virtual Singapore, Smart Dubai, and Smart Barcelona.

November 21, 2019

By Re!magining Cities

This document we published is our attempt to explain (1) benefits of data to real estate owners and developers and (2) the potentials of a "phased approach" to Digital Twin deployment. These three areas would be the intial parts of Digital Twin Phase One and are some areas that we have found real estate developers are motivated to spend money on:

1. Energy optimization

2. Health & well-being

3. Space optimization

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The attached document includes several case studies from Proptech companies to demonstrate how some of the solutions work. Re!magining Cities is quite active in the Proptech space to better understand how the real estate community is adopting technology to improve the performance of their assets. We ant to combine these with some of the desires of Smart Cities so that they can also be actively engaged in the development of Digital Twins in their local jurisdictions.

August 26, 2019

By Enrui Zhang

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...The notion of a future city doesn’t have an authorized or unified definition. However, there’s a general view that the scope of a future city is much broader than the concept of a smart city. It can encompass culture and how urban areas are evolving to meet future trends and expectations. The smart city and its association with data and technological development is crucial in building future cities.

By Chungha Cha, Co-Founder of Re-Imagining Cities Foundation

A presentation explaining the importance of Living Labs aka Digital Technology Layer aka Digital Twin in accordance with Smart Cities. Also available in our Resources tab.

 

PTK1, an 11-story building built in Peta Tikvah, Israel, can accumulate information, process it, and use Artificial Intelligence to make decisions with 14,000 sensors used to monitor the lighting, temperature, occupancy, ventilation, conference rooms availability, and parking.

To read more specifics on this building, please read the PDF document provided in the link below.

October 31, 2019

The United Nations estimates that by 2050, the world’s population will rise nearly 30% to 10 billion. Global energy usage will be 50% higher, led by growth in Asia, according to data collected by the EIA. Ninety percent of this growth will take place in high populated urban areas and cities. Together these factors will put pressure on cities to become more sustainable, secure and mobile.
 

...Digital twins, in particular, are going to play a significant role in the operation of smart cities in the future. The twins are getting recognition as a valuable part of a building’s tech stack. This offers a comprehensive picture of the environment in real-time.

April 23, 2019

By Bernard Marr

What is a digital twin? 
 

As an exact digital replica of something in the physical world, digital twins are made possible thanks to Internet of Things (IoT) sensors that gather data from the physical world and send it to machines to reconstruct. While the concept of a digital twin has been around since 2002 when Michael Grieves at the University of Michigan first used the terminology, it was IoT technology that made it affordable and accessible to many more businesses. By creating a digital twin, insights about how to improve operations, increase efficiency or discover an issue are all possible before it happens to whatever it’s duplicating in the real world. The lessons learned from the digital twin can then be applied to the original system with much less risk and a lot more return on investment. 

November 21, 2018

By Sidney Fussell

In Toronto, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, hopes to create the sensor-filled metropolis of tomorrow...

In Silicon Valley, to make a device "smart" means to add internet connectivity, allowing it to collect, send, and receive data, often while learning and adapting...

 

August 21, 2018

By Frank Van Geertruyden
 

Smart city managers are facing a daunting task. Depending on their size, location, population and numerous other factors, every city has different needs and requirements. And to make things worse, the smart city market is currently neither transparent nor digitalized, making it extremely difficult for them to see the forest through the trees and find the appropriate solutions for the problems their cities are facing.
 

bee smart city, founded in 2017, has one simple goal: to accelerate the development of prosperous and livable smart cities and communities around the globe. To this end, they provide an efficient toolset for smart city analysis and for facilitating collaboration and the successful implementation of the best smart city solutions available.

November 03, 2018

​By Lance Wang

...AI’s potential to ease traffic congestion offers tangible benefits for many of Southeast Asia’s rapidly urbanising cities, where crowded roads are an uncomfortable part of daily life for many people. According to transportation intelligence firm Inrix, Thailand topped the list as the most congested country for the second year running... Integrating AI into current traffic management system is one way for cities to optimize road conditions and enhance urban transportation planning.

The scene is set for an AI-driven future, and by extension, an AI-enabled workforce. AI and automation are reconfiguring the workplace, reshaping operations, processes, workflows and business models. At the same time, such investments in AI are augmenting employee skills and capabilities, paving the way for a future-ready workforce. For instance, AI can help replace manual and repetitive tasks, freeing up employees for more skilled and meaningful work.